Charles J. Rzepka. Selected Studies in Romantic and American Literature, History, and Culture: Inventions and Interventions

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Charles J. Rzepka. Selected Studies in Romantic and American Literature, History, and Culture: Inventions and Interventions. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. Pp. 287. $99.95.

As many of us no doubt have mentioned to our students, the diversity of thought that existed before the mid-nineteenth-century differentiation of disciplines was a significant reason for the vitality of intellectual production in the Romantic era. Cutting-edge science informed by microscopes and electricity experiments coexisted with Shelley's idealism and abstraction; philology, linguistics, and religion were all part of Coleridge's metaphysical stew; and the many different and often unrelated research and speculations that filled the pages of contemporary periodicals were both destined for and emanated from a motley intellectual arena that included amateurs as well as what would be recognized today as specialists or professionals. A similarly exhilarating mix of topics appears in Selected Studies in Romantic and American Literature, History, and Culture: Inventions and Interventions, a new volume that reprints some of Charles Rzepka's best …